More book reviews --

The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai

Everybody was miserable and then their dog is stolen. The language was like being dragged through a briar patch.

Art and Fear – David Bayles & Ted Orland

I wish I could quote the whole book here. It just made me giggle again and again. For example, this is me reading Tarot cards;

Art is exquisitely responsive. Nowhere is feedback so absolute as in the making of art. The work, vibrates in perfect harmony to everything we put into it – or withhold from it. In the outside world there may be no reaction tow hat we do; in our artwork there is nothing but reaction.

The breathtakingly wonderful thing about this reaction is its truthfulness. Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets.

And this is the recipe for changing someone else’s mind;

When Columbus returned from the New World and proclaimed the earth was round, almost everyone else went right on believing the earth was flat. Then they died – and the next generation grew up believing the world was round. That’s how people change their minds.

Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

I really liked the unobtrusive language in the book. I didn’t much care for the way the author tried to build tension by switching back and forth between the main character as a young man and then again as an old man. I thought it was unnecessary and jarring. I don’t like to be distracted from a story once it gets going – just ask my husband who like to channel surf during commercials!

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khalid Hosseini

There was a character in this book that I just adored. She had all kinds of hardships in her life but somehow she managed to radiate kindness. And her kindness paid forward to others. Imagine how bad things would have to be to consider going to Pakistan as a refuge-- bad. I thought it was charming how Hosseini wrote this story as a love letter to Kabul. And I will say that if I managed to build a life where my children were finally safe I would not leave it. Hosseini gave detailed backgrounds of the female characters. But there was one male character I could not understand and I would have liked to have known more of what made him tick.

I was going to put this with my other book reviews but there's a limit to how long a post can be.